Natsume Soseki - Kusamakura

“How much you know!â€​

“Hardly. I only know Kyuichi. I’m quite ignorant otherwise. He doesn’t like talking, does he?â€​

“He’s just being polite. He’s stil a child.â€​

“A child? He’s about the same age as you, surely.â€​

She laughs. “You think so? He’s my cousin, and he’s off to the war, so he’s come to take his leave of the family.â€​

“He’s staying here, is he?â€​

“No, he’s in my older brother’s house.â€​

“So he came here special y to take tea, then.â€​

“He likes plain hot water better than tea, actual y. I do wish Father wouldn’t invite people to tea like that, but he wil do it. I bet his legs went numb from al that formal sitting. If I’d been there, I would have sent him home early.â€​

“Where were you, in fact? The abbot was asking about it, guessing you must have gone off for a walk again.â€​

“Yes, I walked down to Mirror Pool and back.â€​

“I’d like to go there sometime. . . .â€​

“Please do.â€​

“Is it a good place to paint?â€​

“It’s a good place to drown yourself.â€​

“I don’t have any intention of doing that just yet.â€​

“I may do it quite soon.â€​

This joke is uncomfortably close to the bone for mere feminine banter, and I glance quickly at her face. She looks disconcertingly determined.

“Please paint a beautiful picture of me floating there—not lying there suffering, but drifting peaceful y off to the other world.â€​

“Eh?â€​

“Aha, that surprised you, didn’t it! I’ve surprised you, I’ve surprised you!â€​

She rises smoothly to her feet. Three paces take her across to the door, where she turns and beams at me. I just sit there, lost in astonishment.

CHAPTER 10

I have come to take a look at Mirror Pool.

The path behind Kankaiji temple drops down out of the cedar forest into a val ey, forking before it begins to climb the mountain beyond, and there, enclosed by the two ways, lies Mirror Pool. Dwarf bamboo crowds its edges. In some places the leaves press in so densely on either side that you can barely avoid setting up a rustling as you pass. The water is visible from among the trees, but unless you actual y go around it, you have no way of guessing where the pool begins and ends. A walk around its perimeter reveals that it’s surprisingly smal , probably no more than three hundred fifty yards. However, the shape is highly irregular; large rocks jut out here and there into the water. What’s more, the exact point of the shoreline is as difficult to judge as the pool’s shape, for the lapping waves create a constant, irregular undulation along its edge.

The area around the pool is largely broadleaf woods, containing countless hundreds of trees, some not yet flush with spring leaf bud. Where the branches are relatively sparse there is even a carpet of young grass, sprouting in the warmth of the bright spring sunlight that filters through, and the tender forms of little wild violets peep out here and there.

Japanese violets seem asleep. No one would be tempted to describe them, as one Western poet has done, in the grandiose terms of “a divine conception†. . . but just as this thought crosses my mind, my feet come to a sudden halt. Now once your feet have stopped moving, you can find yourself standing in one place for an inordinate length of time—and lucky is the man who can do so. If your feet suddenly halt on a Tokyo street, you wil very soon be kil ed by a passing tram, or moved on by a policeman. Peaceful folk are treated like beggars in the city, while fine wages are paid to detectives, who are no better than petty criminals.

I lower my peaceful rump onto the cushion of grass. No one wil raise an objection even if I should choose simply to stay sitting here for the next five or six days. That is the wonderful thing about the natural world; while on the one hand it has neither pity nor remorse, on the other, it is neither fickle nor arbitrary in its dealings with people—it treats al indifferently alike. Many are prepared to turn their noses up at the rich and powerful, the Iwasakis and Mitsuis of this world.1 But who besides Nature can cool y turn his back on the ancient authority of emperors? The virtues of Nature far and away transcend our pitiful human world; there absolute equality holds eternal sway. Rather than associate with the vulgar and thus induce in yourself the kind of misanthropic fury felt by Timon of Athens, 2 far better to fol ow the way of the sages of old, to cultivate flowers and herbs in your little plot and spend your days in peaceful coexistence with Nature. People like to speak loftily of “fairness†and “disinterest.†Wel , if this means so much to them, surely we would do best to kil a thousand petty criminals a day and use their corpses to fertilize a world of gardens. . . .

But my thoughts have degenerated into mere tiresome quibbles. I haven’t come to Mirror Pool to engage in these schoolboy ramblings! I take a cigarette from the packet of Shikishima tucked in my sleeve and strike a match. Though my hand registers the rasp, no flame is visible. I apply it to the tip of the cigarette and draw, and only now, as smoke issues from my nose, can I be certain I am smoking a lit cigarette. In the short grass the discarded match sends up a little dragon curl of smoke, then expires. I now shift my seat slowly down to the shore. My grassy cushion slopes smoothly right on into the pool; I pause just at the edge, where any farther advance must bring the tepid water over my feet, and peer in.

The pool seems quite shal ow for as far out as my gaze can reach. Long, delicate stems of waterweed lie sunk there, in a deathly trance—I can think of no other way to put it. The grasses on the hil wil bend with the breeze; stems of seaweed await the wave’s tender, enticing touch. This sunken waterweed, immobile for a century and more, holds itself in constant readiness for motion; through the endless recurrence of days and nights, it waits, the tips of those long stems fraught with whole lifetimes of yearning, for that moment when it wil find itself tousled at last into action.

Yet in al this time it has never moved. Thus it lives on, unable stil to die.

I stand and pick up from the grass two handy stones. I’ve decided to perform an act of charity for this waterweed. I toss one stone into the pool directly in front of me and watch as two large bubbles come gurgling up, to vanish in an instant. Vanish in an instant, vanish in an instant, my mind repeats. Gazing into the water, I can see three long stems of waterweed like strands of hair begin to sway languidly about, but in the next instant a swirl of muddy water wel s up from the bottom to hide them from sight. I murmur a quick prayer.

The next stone I hurl with al my strength, right into the middle of the pool. There is a faint plop, but the tranquil pool refuses to be disturbed. At this, I lose the urge to throw any more stones; instead, I set off walking to the right, leaving my painting box and hat lying where they are.

The first few yards are an uphil climb. Large trees branch thickly overhead, and a sudden chil strikes me. A wild camel ia bush is blooming in deep shade on the far bank. The green of camel ia leaves seems to me altogether too dark, and there’s no cheerfulness in them even when bathed in the midday sunshine or lit by a patch of sunlight. And this particular camel ia is growing quite deep within a crevice in the rocks, huddled there in quiet seclusion, so that if it weren’t for the flowers, one would never notice it. Those flowers! They are so many that a day’s counting could not number them—though now that I’ve noticed those bril iant blooms, I feel almost tempted to try. Bright though they are, they have nothing sunny in them. They seize your attention like little sudden flares, but as you continue to gaze, you feel for some reason an uncanny shudder.